As I write this, we’re in the second day of the MLB Division Series (round-of-8). My beloved Blue Jays, the #1 overall seed in the American League, have pounded the favored Yankees in each of the first two games of their best-of-five series. I am starting to dream of a Blue Jays – Brewers World Series later this month, which would be so much fun. Elsewhere, my Broncos had a stunning come-from-behind win today at the undefeated Eagles, while my eldest son’s Illini had a nice win yesterday and are once again ranked in the top 20.

So, you might think I’d feel like all was well in world. But that’s not exactly how I feel these days. There’s just so much going awry, it’s basically impossible to keep track.

Recent developments in a number of areas about which I had been blogging:

Kimmel. In a rare piece of good news, public pressure got Disney to put Jimmy Kimmel’s show back on the air within a week of them having “indefinitely suspended” him over what were really rather mild comments about the Charlie Kirk assassination. A few days after that, the two groups of ABC affiliates who led the move against Kimmel relented and put his show back on their airwaves. There has been no new news that I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks about the alleged assassin’s motivations.

H-1B. Shortly after my last post, the administration clarified that the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applies only to new applications, and is a one-time rather than annual fee. The first lawsuit challenging the executive order, which appears to be captioned Global Nurse Force v. Trump, was filed on Friday in the Northern District of California.

Alien Enemies Act. The 5th Circuit voted to have an en banc rehearing of its recent decision in W.M.M. v. Trump, around whether the administration can assert that the activities of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua constitute an “invasion” for purposes of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. A dissent argues that it would have been more appropriate to just let SCOTUS reach the merits of the issue as soon as possible, given that the 3-judge panel had released lengthy opinions covering both sides of the controversy. It is not yet clear when the 5th Circuit en banc will hear the case.

Military. Three different things to discuss here.

First, in a very unusual action, Secretary Hegseth summoned all U.S. generals around the world to come to a publicly announced meeting in Quantico, Virginia, for purposes of hearing speeches from both Hegseth and Trump in front of a Patton-esque flag. To the attendees’ credit, they reportedly remained stony-faced throughout, notwithstanding the overt political nature of some of the speakers’ comments. The most controversial part of Trump’s remarks was his suggestion that U.S. cities should be used as military training grounds.

Second, the administration has now made four separate military strikes against boats in the Southern Caribbean, having “now summarily killed 21 people it says were smuggling drugs as if they were not criminal suspects but enemy soldiers in a war zone” (per the NYTimes). The administration has reportedly argued to Congress that the U.S. is engaged in a “noninternational armed conflict” with certain drug cartels, justifying the military strikes. Legal pundits Marty Lederman and Ben Wittes each think that this legal argument is invalid, with Wittes going further to argue that the strikes are clearly criminal acts of murder under U.S. law. Not that Trump could ever be prosecuted for this, thanks to the SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. U.S.; but perhaps Hegseth and other officials could be, in time.

Finally, Trump continues to persist with his ambitions of sending military troops into Democratic-controlled cities, even when (unlike in Memphis) contrary to the wishes of the local governor. A week ago Trump wrote a social media post talking around “war-ravaged Portland,” much to the confusion of locals. He followed that up with an order federalizing 200 Oregon National Guard troops so that they could be sent into Portland. Local officials sued to block the move, receiving a court order preventing it. Now Trump has pivoted to deploying previously federalized California National Guard troops, to which Governor Newsom is expected to object. Meanwhile, Trump appears to be federalizing 300 Illinois National Guard troops for use in Chicago, against the wishes of Governor Pritzker.

Cook. In a rare shadow docket setback for the administration, SCOTUS has deferred the government’s application for a stay of an appellate court decision preventing Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, instead indicating that the Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Cook in January.

In a thematically related shadow docket action, SCOTUS recently granted the administration a stay in Trump v. Slaughter, a case about Trump’s firing in March of two FTC commissioners, and scheduled that case for oral argument in December 2025. At that point the Court is widely expected to formally overrule a relevant 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executioner. Kagan’s dissent, joined by the other two liberals, criticized the majority for using the shadow docket “to permit what our own precedent bars,” arguing instead that the stay should have been denied until such time as Humphrey’s is actually overruled.

New York Mayoral Race. With Mamdani consistently polling in the mid-40s in the four-way, first-past-the-post mayoral race in NYC, there had been speculation in recent weeks about trying to get Mayor Adams to drop out of the race. He did finally drop out, about a week ago. Even so, prediction markets are still assessing the young socialist’s likelihood of winning the race as being in the mid-80s.

Politicization of DOJ. A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia resigned under extreme pressure. It seems that his district had been investigating whether federal charges should be filed against former FBI Director James Comey, in connection with purported perjurious testimony Comey provided to Congress in late September of 2020. The 5-year statute of limitations for such charges was about to expire, and the U.S. Attorney had apparently concluded that no charges were warranted.

Trump apparently did not like that answer. Pressure was brought to bear, and that U.S. Attorney was replaced by a 36-year-old insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, but who had been part of Trump’s legal team in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and more recently had served as a special assistant to the president. The new U.S. Attorney (who had never before been involved in a grand jury proceeding) promptly indicted Comey, days before the statute of limitations would have expired. His first court appearance will be later this week.

War Against DEI. This week the administration announced that $18 billion of federal funding for the Hudson Tunnel and Second Avenue Subway infrastructure projects in New York City were being put on hold, “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.” Not to make Chicago feel left out, days later the administration put $2 billion of federal funding for the Red Line Extension project on hold “to ensure funding is not flowing based on race-based contracting.”

War Against Universities. Notwithstanding Harvard’s recent legal win, Trump asserted this week that a settlement with the university was imminent, suggesting that Harvard would pay $500 million. Days later, there has been no further news. Meanwhile, Governor Newsom suggested this week that California universities who enter into settlements with the federal government would see their state funding pulled.

Birthright Citizenship. Last week the administration petitioned SCOTUS for certiorari in Trump v. Washington, a case out of the 9th Circuit relating to the birthright citizenship executive order. By doing so, Solicitor General Sauer honored the promise he had made in the Trump v. CASA oral argument, namely that even if the administration keeps losing on this issue in each and every case, it would nonetheless seek certiorari in order to achieve a definitive nationwide answer to the controversy. Underscoring that point, days after the cert filing the administration lost a similar case in another circuit, this time the 1st Circuit.

Foreign Students and Speech. A Reagan-appointed district court judge recently ruled against the administration in a case, AAUP v. Rubio, arising out of various immigration-related actions the administration took in the spring with respect to foreign students for purportedly antisemitic speech. Summarizing the judge’s view of the case: “nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the First Amendment suggests that persons lawfully present here may be subject to adverse action based on their political speech, where that speech is primarily concerned with the actions of foreign nations with whom the United States is not at war and Congress has not made a specific determination that a specific organization threatens the violent overthrow of the government.”

Arizona By-Election. As expected, the daughter of recently deceased Democratic Representative Raul Grijalva easily won the by-election to replace her father. In principle she should provide the 218th vote for the discharge position that would force an up-or-down House vote on the release of the Epstein files. However, Speaker Johnson has repeatedly delayed the swearing-in of the newest Congresswoman. I wonder why.

Rescission. Basking in the success of his legislative rescission this summer, Trump recently attempted a so-called “pocket rescission” in which he informed Congress, less than 45 days before the end of the fiscal year, that he did not intend to spend a few billion worth of previously appropriated foreign aid funding. The legality of this type of action is questionable, and as such the pocket rescission announcement led to a SCOTUS shadow docket case called Department of State vs. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. Predictably, at this point, the majority allowed the administration to proceed with its desired course of action (i.e., not spending the money), while taking pains to note that this was not a final ruling on the legality of that government action. It was Kagan’s turn to pen the dissent for the three liberals, writing the following in conclusion:

“[T]he standard for granting emergency relief is supposed to be stringent. The Executive has not come close to meeting it here. And the consequence of today’s grant is significant. I appreciate that the majority refrains from offering a definitive view of this dispute and the questions raised in it. But the effect of its ruling is to allow the Executive to cease obligating $4 billion in funds that Congress appropriated for foreign aid, and that will now never reach its intended recipients. Because that result conflicts with the separation of powers, I respectfully dissent.”

In addition to all of these ongoing items, we now have an important new topic: Government Shutdown.

Six months ago, a faction of moderate Democratic Senators had declined to endorse a government shutdown, perhaps fearful that a shutdown would allow Trump and his DOGE to do even more damage to the federal government than he was doing. The way things have gone since then, neither party seems particularly willing to cooperate with the other. Not that the Democrats have given a clear vision for what they seek to achieve from this shutdown, mind you, although they having been talking a lot about the Republican’s failure in OBBBA to extend the Biden-era increases to the ACA’s premium subsidies via advance premium tax credits.

At this point we’re only 5 days into the shutdown and the pain hasn’t really hit yet; we’ll see what happens, and who the populace blames.

My last post was written shortly after the assassination of Republican activist Charlie Kirk, but before any arrests had been made. Within 48 hours of the shooting, the alleged assassin was in custody. He is a 22-year-old white male, from a Republican Mormon family in Utah, who had dropped out of university after one semester and then enrolled in a trade school.

The alleged killer’s demographic profile did not exactly fit the template that the right wing was expecting, given their immediate reaction in the wake of the murder that the “radical left” were to blame. A viral tweet captured the moment: “Civil war cancelled due to shooter being demographically uncooperative.”

Several days later, the picture is still a little murky about the alleged killer’s politics and motivations. However, the emerging story from prosecutors is that he had become romantically involved with his roommate, a trans woman, and said he’d “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred” towards trans individuals. There is no sign so far of any other parties being involved in this act of political violence.

Even so, there is legitimate worry in certain circles that the administration may use Kirk’s shooting as a pretext for repressing left-leaning organizations and voices. As an op-ed yesterday in The Guardian put it, “we must not let the shooting of Charlie Kirk become Trump’s Reichstag fire.” For his part, Trump yesterday asserted he would be designating antifa as a “terrorist organization,” which seems hard to do seeing as how antifa doesn’t actually exist.

On Monday night, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel made the following comment in his monologue:

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

(This was, incidentally, the day before the court documents were filed asserting that the alleged killer’s motives may have been related to trans rights.)

Later that week, the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC accused Kimmel of “appearing to directly mislead the American public about a significant fact” and made comments threatening ABC’s broadcast license. To my tastes, the FCC chair’s comments misrepresent what Kimmel actually said. Kimmel did not say the alleged killer was a MAGAite; he said that conservatives were doing everything possible to paint him as not being a MAGAite, notwithstanding that he’s a 22-year-old white Mormon male from Utah raised in a conservative family.

Then yesterday, Disney-owned ABC announced that they were suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show indefinitely. ABC had previously agreed to pay $15 million towards Trump’s presidential library in order to settle a (possibly frivolous) defamation lawsuit; now, they have bent the knee further. Democrats are calling on the FCC chair to resign, as if that will happen.

So, the 1st Amendment is now under significant assault by the administration. Terrific… No statement yet from Kimmel; it will be interesting to see his reaction, which may well come in the form of one or more lawsuits.

In other news, on Monday the D.C. Circuit Court ruled 2-1 against Trump’s motion to lift the stay that a lower court had placed on his alleged firing “for cause” of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The majority opinion ruled that Cook’s due process argument had merit, and therefore they did not need to (nor did they) reach the merits of her argument about the meaning of “for cause”. The dissenting judge, by contrast, opined that “for cause” could basically mean whatever the President wants it to mean, rather than the more limited range of potential “causes” outlined in Judge Cobb’s lower court opinion. Today Trump elevated the case to SCOTUS, so Trump v. Cook is now sitting on the shadow docket. In the meantime, the factual accuracy of the “mortgage fraud” allegations against Cook have been cast into doubt, while journalists have uncovered that Treasury Secretary Bessent appears to have once engaged in the exact same form of “mortgage fraud” conduct that underpins the allegations against Cook.

Finally, no federal troops are in Chicago yet, although the National Guard will imminently be deployed to Memphis for crime prevention purposes, with the support of Tennessee’s (Republican) governor.

It’s the 24th anniversary of 9/11 today. And it’s been quite a week, even if things have remained quiet in Chicago, which is where I feared the week’s emphasis would be after last weekend’s Chipocalyptic social media post.

On Monday we had another apparent 6-3 shadow docket decision from SCOTUS to overturn a lower court order aimed at preventing the government from immediately doing something that smells illegal, pending full resolution of the legal issues involved. This story is getting old.

This week’s case, Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, involves racial profiling by ICE. There has recently been an apparent pattern of behavior in which ICE are stopping individuals in L.A. based solely on a combination of four factors — ethnicity, language/accent, location, and profession — without having any other reason to believe the individuals have violated immigration laws. A District Court judge in California issued an injunction preventing the government from acting so indiscriminately, and the 9th Circuit declined to overturn that injunction; but now, SCOTUS has overturned it.

Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion joined by the other two liberals, using the less polite phrase “I dissent” rather than the customary “I respectfully dissent.” The standout sentence from the dissent is: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”

The majority offered no explanation for its ruling. However, Kavanaugh did pen a 10-page concurrence explaining his reasoning, although it was not joined by any of the conservatives, nor did it satisfy the liberals. Sotomayor writes: “[I]t is the Government’s burden to prove that it has reasonable suspicion to stop someone. The concurrence improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.”

Speaking of profiles, earlier this summer the WSJ had published an article alleging that Trump had written a curious poem for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday two decades ago, including a drawing of a naked woman and a signature in what would be the woman’s pubic region. Trump had vigorously denied this and sued the WSJ and Rupert Murdoch. Well, this week House Democrats released the picture, which is contained in a bound book prepared for that birthday celebration and recently provided to Congress by the Epstein estate. Trump again denied that the signature was his, upon which the media promptly found several other examples from that period of Trump using the very same signature style.

There continue to be efforts made in Congress to force the government to release more of the DOJ’s Epstein files. Representatives Massie (R-KY) and Khanna (D-CA) have collaborated on a discharge petition to force Speaker Johnson to call a vote on the matter. Yesterday a new Democratic representative from Virginia took office, thanks to this week’s by-election (in which the Democratic majority expanded from 67-33 in November to 75-25), and his election leaves the petition only one vote short. That vote should be provided in about two weeks, after an Arizona by-election in a safe Democratic seat occurs. Today Schumer tried to force the issue in the Senate, falling short 49-51; Hawley and Paul joined the Democrats, but Collins and Murkowski did not.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook received an district court injunction keeping her in office, notwithstanding Trump’s purported firing of her “for cause” based on alleged mortgage fraud transpiring before her appointed to the Fed. Per Judge Cobb’s ruling: “The best reading of the “for cause” provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties. “For cause” thus does not contemplate removing an individual purely for conduct that occurred before they began in office.” Today Trump filed an emergency appeal with the D.C. Circuit, seeking to get her out of office before the Fed’s two-day meeting next week, at which the Fed is widely expected to begin lowering interest rates.

But, overshadowing all of this news as well as the 9/11 anniversary was the shocking assassination yesterday afternoon of Charlie Kirk, the Republican activist who was almost certainly the best-known U.S. political figure born in the 1990s (noting that AOC was born in late 1989). Kirk was killed in the middle of an outdoor speech he was giving at Utah Valley University, shot in the neck by a single bullet fired from 200 yards away. It has been over 24 hours at this point since the assassination and the shooter has yet to be apprehended, although today authorities released the picture of a person of interest. Notwithstanding that the profile of the shooter was completely unknown, Trump swiftly blamed the “radical left” while recounting a list of political violence that failed to include incidents perpetrated by right-leaning individuals, such as this summer’s assassinations in Minnesota.

While the first half of the week contained some promising legal news, there have been several unsettling developments as the week progressed.

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order entitled “Restoring the United States Department of War”. We’d had a Department of War from 1789 through 1947, at which point it was renamed the Department of the Army; then in 1949 the Departments of Army, Navy, and Air Force were in effect combined into the modern Department of Defense. It would apparently take a statute to formally rename the Department of Defense, but Trump’s order authorizes the use of the terms Department of War and Secretary of War (for Hegseth) in “official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch.”

Earlier in the week, U.S. military forces carried out an air strike on a boat in the Caribbean, ostensibly because the boat was involved in drug trafficking by the Venezuelan “terrorist organization” Tren de Aragua. The legality of this strike is doubtful, although the President’s formal letter to Congress about the strike suggested the strike was justifiable on grounds of national self-defense, even though the 11 people killed in the attack would appear to be civilians rather than soldiers. Some are wondering if Trump is setting the stage for a war against Venezuela, perhaps in Wag The Dog fashion to distract from other woes.

Then yesterday, Trump made a social media post with an AI-generated picture that is beyond belief. The background is Chicago, burning and with helicopters flying over it; the caption reads “Chipocalypse Now”, in the font associated with the 1979 war movie Apocalypse Now; and the picture shows Trump’s face superimposed over the body & clothes of the officer played by Robert Duvall in that film. The text in the social media post reads: ” ‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” I have no words.

President Obama was particularly fond of a Martin Luther King Jr. quote about the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. It has been a pretty good week in that regards, for a change.

The week started on Tuesday with Judge Breyer’s decision in Newsom v. Trump, the case in which the California Governor argued that the President’s use, in L.A. starting in June, of the Marines and the federalized National Guard to execute domestic law was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. In Breyer’s ruling, he agrees that the Posse Comitatus Act was violated. He also granted injunctive relief (currently stayed until September 12th), along the following lines:

“Defendants are enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants, unless and until Defendants satisfy the requirements of a valid constitutional or statutory exception, as defined herein, to the Posse Comitatus Act.”

Consistent with the new world order frowning on universal injunctions, Breyer’s injunctive relief is narrowly tailored to California, although Breyer noted in his ruling the President’s threats to send National Guard troops into Oakland and San Francisco, underscoring the need for such relief in parts of the state beyond L.A. Having said that, one imagines his opinion will carry some weight if and when officials in, say, Illinois are faced with federal troops sent in to carry out immigration raids.

Later that same day, the 5th Circuit issued a substantive (as opposed to due process) ruling in an Alien Enemies Act case relating to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Many observers had felt that, the 5th being the most conservative of the circuit courts, there was a greater likelihood that the administration might receive a favorable ruling in this district on its interpretation of the 1798 statute. However, in the case once called A.A.R.P. v. Trump but now called W.M.M. v. Trump, by a 2-1 majority the panel ruled that “we find no invasion or predatory incursion,” and thus enjoined the government from relying on the AEA to deport members of a class of affected individuals. Judge Oldham, perhaps auditioning for a SCOTUS appointment under Trump, wrote a 130-page opinion with the unusual ending “I respectfully but emphatically dissent.”

Then yesterday, Judge Burroughs gave Harvard University a thorough legal victory in Harvard v. HHS, contesting the administration’s actions in April and May to strip the university of roughly $2 billion in federal research funding, purportedly due to concerns about Harvard’s actions to combat antisemitism. The summary of paragraph of her ruling reads:

“Defendants and the President are right to combat antisemitism and to use all lawful means to do so. Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did. The record here, however, does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment. We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other. Harvard is currently, even if belatedly, taking steps it needs to take to combat antisemitism and seems willing to do even more if need be. Now it is the job of the courts to similarly step up, to act to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech as required by the Constitution, and to ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally infirm grant terminations, even if doing so risks the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost.”

(“Committed to its agenda no matter the cost” will likely end up being the epitaph for this administration, TACO notwithstanding.)

Perhaps the most interesting part of Burroughs’ opinion is found in a footnote. In order to explain that context of that footnote, however, I need to go back a couple of weeks and mention an August SCOTUS shadow docket decision that I hadn’t previously mentioned, NIH v. AHPA.

That case arose out of the administration’s termination of a large number of NIH grants to researchers, for which the 1st Circuit had provided injunctive relief. Consistent with most of its other recent shadow docket actions, SCOTUS has now lifted the lower court stay, allowing the grant terminations to take effect while litigation on their legality continues, while at the same time creating an odd two-track process for that ongoing litigation. In NIH v. AHPA the Court splintered more than it usually does, in an unusual 4-1-4 configuration: Roberts and the 3 liberals would have kept the stay in place; the 3 arch-conservatives and Kavanaugh would have lifted it entirely; and as such Barrett’s opinion, joined by nobody else, ends up controlling the situation.

But Gorsuch wrote a scathing concurrence, the first sentence of which reads: “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.” In Gorsuch’s mind, the outcome of this case was pre-ordained by a 5-4 shadow docket decision from early April, in Dept. of Education v. California, and hence the lower court’s ruling was contrary to established SCOTUS precedent. (Never mind that in Roberts’ dissent, joined by the 3 liberals, he believes that this case is in fact distinguishable from the earlier case.)

With that as background, here is Burroughs’ heroic footnote:

“[T]he Supreme Court’s recent emergency docket rulings have not been a model of clarity, and have left many issues unresolved. … This Court understands, of course, that the Supreme Court, like the district courts, are trying to resolve these issues quickly, often on an emergency basis, and that the issues are complex and evolving. … Given this, however, the Court respectfully submits that it is unhelpful and unnecessary to criticize district courts for “defy[ing]” the Supreme Court when they are working to find the right answer in a rapidly evolving doctrinal landscape, where they must grapple with both existing precedent and interim guidance from the Supreme Court that appears to set that precedent aside without much explanation or consensus.”

Of course, there will be appeals in all these cases, so perhaps the arc will swing back over time even if, for the moment, justice is served.

And speaking of appeals, the administration has filed its petition for certiorari in what is now styled Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, the IEEPA tariffs case decided last week by the Federal Circuit. Alongside the petition, the government filed a motion — with respondents’ acquiescence — requesting “expedited consideration of the merits to the maximum extent feasible” and proposing that oral argument take place in the first week of November, which is lightning fast by SCOTUS standards. Assuming SCOTUS agrees, that should vault this case to the top of the list of noteworthy SCOTUS cases for the October 2026 term.

Finally, in political news Senator Ernst (R-IA) has announced that she will not seek re-election in 2026. It is a sad commentary on our politics when the Iowa Senator born in 1970 is seeking to retire from public life while the Iowa Senator born in 1933 chose to run for an 8th term in 2022 and hasn’t ruled out running again in 2028. This could put another Senate seat in play next year, with Democratic hopes in Iowa bolstered by a recent State Senate by-election in which the Democrats won a seat 55-45 in a district that went 55-44 for Trump last November.

It’s Labor Day today. To celebrate, last week the Department of Labor hoisted a giant banner of President Trump on its HQ in D.C., alongside a similar banner of Teddy Roosevelt. Nothing says “we’re definitely not becoming an authoritarian country” than putting a giant banner of our glorious leader on a government building, amirite?

Trump has kept an exceptionally low profile since a Cabinet meeting 6 days ago, with no public appearances until yesterday morning, when he was seen getting into a limo to go to his Virginia golf club. Later yesterday his social media account posted a picture of him playing golf with football coach Jon Gruden; except that Trump wasn’t wearing the same golf clothes in the picture as he was when he entered the limo, and Gruden was wearing the same golf clothes he wore in pictures he’d posted the previous Sunday, sparking speculation that the picture was in fact a week old. Nothing says “we’re definitely not hiding information about our glorious leader’s health” than keeping him out of the public eye for several days and then posting an old picture without admitting that it’s old, amirite?

In industrial policy news, last week the U.S. government purchased a 10% stake in chip manufacturer Intel, using funds that had originally been earmarked under the Biden-era CHIPS Act as direct grants to Intel. This came less than three weeks after Trump had called for Intel’s recently appointed CEO to resign due to purported links to China, and after Trump had struck a (probably illegal) deal with two of Intel’s competitors (Nvidia and AMD) to grant them export licenses to China for certain AI-related chips in exchange for the U.S. government getting 15% of the revenues. This is where I’m obligated to remind the reader that Trump represents the Republican Party. Nothing says “we’re definitely not devolving into crony capitalism” than bullying a CEO into accepting direct government investment and having the government take a cut of private company revenues, amirite?

One of the major stories of the past week involves Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, a Black woman originally appointed in 2022 on a 51-50 Senate vote (with VP Harris breaking the tie) and then re-appointed in 2023 for a 14-year term ending in 2038 on a 51-47 Senate vote. Trump’s appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency recently alleged that back in 2021, Cook had committed a form of mortgage fraud by virtue of, in separate mortgage applications for two different properties, indicating that both properties were a principal residence. Without providing any opportunity for Cook to respond to these allegations, Trump then used the allegations as his grounds for purportedly firing Cook “for cause”, the only grounds under which a Fed governor may be removed involuntarily prior to the end of their term. Cook has sued to remain in her position. Recall that in the Wilcox shadow docket decision earlier this year, SCOTUS appeared to distinguish between Fed governors and other appointees; as such it will be particularly interesting to see how this case develops. Nothing says “we’re definitely still committed to the rule of law and the appropriate use of power” than using a political appointee to gather dirt on a political enemy and using that dirt pretextually, amirite?

Enough of that schtick, amirite? Catching up on some other news:

• Gerrymandering. After two weeks as refugees the Texas Democratic legislators returned to their home state, providing the quorum needed for Texas Republicans to enact their mid-decennial Congressional redistricting plan, which is expected to transfer 5 seats from Democratic to Republican hands in 2026. California has now also enacted their own mid-decennial redistricting plan, which is expected to transfer 5 seats the other way; however, the California plan requires ratification by the voters this November. Other states may be taking action soon. There was also a recent court ruling in Utah against the current gerrymandered map, which splits Salt Lake City into 4 districts to dilute Democratic voting power.
• Tariffs. On Friday the Federal Circuit issued its 7-4 en banc ruling in the IEEPA tariffs case, V.O.S. Selections v. Trump. The majority per curiam opinion was intentionally silent on the question of whether IEEPA authorizes tariffs at all, but ruled that the tariffs in question exceeded the authority given to the President under IEEPA. Four of those seven judges wrote separately to argue that IEEPA does not authorize any tariffs, period. In a separate order, the ruling was stayed for 45 days to allow the government to appeal to SCOTUS. As such, it now seems likely that this case will reach the regular merits docket of SCOTUS in the upcoming term.
• Federalization of the National Guard. There are currently over 2,000 National Guard members from six different states in D.C., purportedly to deal with an emergency situation regarding violent crime, but largely there as a show of force by the President. He has signaled that Chicago may be next, to which both Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker take great objection. The bench trial in the L.A. Posse Comitatus Act case, Newsom v. Trump, ended two weeks ago with no ruling yet. DHS Secretary Noem yesterday made the ludicrous claim that L.A. would have burned down in June without federal intervention.
• Trump Organization fraud trial. After taking almost a year to rule, a New York appellate court finally released its ruling on Trump’s appeal in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial under Judge Engoron. The five-judge panel was quite splintered, to the extent that there is no majority opinion. Four of the five agree that the prosecution was warranted. However, only two of those four concur with the outcome of the trial; the other two believe that the errors made at trial were sufficiently critical that a new trial would be required, but of course such trial would be impractical at this point. As such, the ~$500 million disgorgement order has been thrown out, while the injunctive relief that would prevent Trump or his sons from running a New York business remains intact (but continues to be stayed pending full resolution of the appeal).

With both House and Senate now in their summer recess, and SCOTUS having largely worked its way through what has accumulated on the shadow docket, you’d think there might not be that much to talk about these days. Yeah, right…

A major story this month has been efforts by the Republican-led Texas government to call a special legislative session for the purpose of performing a highly unusual mid-decennial Congressional districting. This was suggested by President Trump, and the gerrymandered map that Texas Republicans want to implement is carefully designed to transfer 5 seats from the Democrats to Republicans. So far, the Texas state Democratic caucus has thwarted these plans by escaping to various Blue states, although there is talk that the FBI might attempt to bring them back to Texas (under extremely questionable authority) and/or that their legislative seats might be declared vacant with Republicans appointed to fill them (ditto).

While this percolates, other Democratic-held states have threatened a gerrymandering race to the bottom. On the one hand, it is perhaps refreshing to see Democrats finally respond to a naked exercise of power on the other side of the aisle with a willingness to hold their noses and respond in kind. On the other hand, it is clearly hideous for the long-term legitimacy of our democratic form of government if we end up in a gerrymandering cold war.

Later this week, and to the disgust of many, Russian President Putin will be visiting U.S. soil for a summit meeting with Trump. The Alaska summit’s purpose is to discuss an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, without participation from either Ukraine or Europe. Of course we’re now over six months into Trump’s second term and his promised “day one” resolution to the war.

Today a three-day-long federal trial commenced in Newsom v. Trump over whether Trump’s use of military forces in L.A. in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act. In related news, today Trump announced that he was federalizing the D.C. National Guard and also asserting federal control over the D.C. police, citing a purported emergency regarding violent crime (notwithstanding that crime rates in D.C. have declined significantly from 2023 to 2025). The Home Rule Act of 1973 gives the President the ability to seize control of the D.C. police on an emergency basis for 48 hours, and then brief Congress on why such control may need to be extended for up to 30 days.

Finally, Trump just announced a further 90-day delay in the implementation of higher tariffs for China, which I think makes it the only country besides Mexico for which higher tariffs have yet to go into effect. At present the aggregate effective tariff rate has been estimated by J.P. Morgan Chase to be 15.3%, up from 2.3% at the end of 2024. Analysis from Goldman Sachs indicates that in the first half of 2025, businesses chose to absorb 64% of the impact from higher tariffs; however by late 2025, U.S. consumers are expected to be absorbing two-thirds of the tariff burden.

August 1st marked the day that Trump had indicated tariffs would go into effect for any country that had not negotiated a “deal”. In the end he blinked with respect to Mexico, giving them another 90 days. He has announced “deals” with the EU, Japan, and South Korea, all of which will have 15% tariff rates going forward. (I’m putting air quotes around “deal” because given how rapidly negotiations were conducted, it is far from clear that all parties have the same understanding of the agreement.) There was no “deal” with Canada, for which the tariff rate for goods not covered by the Trump 1.0-era USMCA will now be 35%, and those tariffs actually took effect on August 1st instead of August 7th as will be the case for most other countries.

The Federal Circuit did hear oral argument en banc last week in its IEEPA tariffs case, V.O.S. Selections vs. Trump, and that argument didn’t seem to go well for the government although it is still hard to know what will happen here. Still, absent a judicial rebuke of Trump’s interpretation of the IEEPA (coupled with a Congressional refusal to enact Trump’s tariffs after the fact), the United States is entering a whole new world of international trade. But to what useful purpose? Supply chain management professor Zachary Rogers made the following observation this week:

“Right now, a finished car from Japan carries a 15% tariff. Conversely, a car built in the U.S will come with the following: 50% tariff on steel, aluminum, and copper, 40% tariff on components from China (rare earths, batteries), 25% on components from South Korea (electronics), 25% on components from Mexico, and 35% on components from Canada. Plus, you have to pay high U.S. labor costs. In this scenario, the imported finished car from Japan looks pretty good.”

The risk of stagflation appears real. But will we know it? On Friday Trump took the unprecedented step of firing the non-partisan head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the July jobs report showed significant downward restatements in the previously reported jobs figures for both May and June. A year ago during the campaign, Trump had made unfounded accusations that the Biden administration had, for political purposes, been reporting overly rosy jobs figures that then got downwardly restated. Now that similar downward restatements have occurred on his watch, he still suspects a political motive. Separately, economists have noted this week that, over the past 3 months, the government’s use of estimates rather than actual data in the computation of inflation statistics has dramatically increased (possibly because of DOGE-related cuts in the government). All of this is leading an increasing number of people to use the phrase “banana republic” in connection with the U.S.A.

Oh, and this week the EPA proposed revoking its 2009 “endangerment finding”, which has served as the lynchpin of federal efforts to address climate change. This reflects a perspective that federal climate regulations are actually contrary to the public interest, as they lead to increased car prices and decrease consumer choice for cars.

Oh, and recently the administration had negotiated a prisoner swap with Venezuela, in which hundreds of Venezuelans held at the CECOT facility in El Salvador were traded for ten American citizens and permanent residents held in Venezuelan prisons. Except, only nine of the ten were “political prisoners” in any conceivable meaning of the term. The tenth has admitted to having committed a triple murder in Spain but ran to South America and eventually was arrested and tried for the Spanish crime by officials in his birth country, Venezuela. After serving less than 7 years of a 30-year sentence, the man is now apparently living free in the U.S. Terrific diplomacy, there.

Oh, and there was a shadow docket decision this week in a case called Trump v. Boyle, filed by two members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission who Trump fired without cause in early May, contrary to existing law. Two months earlier SCOTUS had issued an order in a similar shadow docket case, Trump v. Wilcox, allowing a similar firing of officials to take effect while they continue litigation to prevent it, even though a 1935 SCOTUS precedent called Humphrey’s Executor would indicate that these firings should not be allowed. The same 3 liberals who had dissented in Wilcox also dissented in Boyle, noting this time that “only another under-reasoned emergency order undergirds today’s.” But interestingly, this time Kavanaugh also wrote separately to say that while he agreed with granting a stay, he also would have granted certiorari so that SCOTUS could hear this case now (and adding that he also would have done the same two months ago in Wilcox), speeding matters up.

Oh, and Emil Bove was indeed confirmed by the Senate to a seat on the 3rd Circuit, 50-49, with the only Republican nays being Collins and Murkowski. Disappointing to see lame ducks Tillis and McConnell fall in line here.

Oh, and a piece of crypto legislation called the GENIUS Act was recently signed into law, while another piece of crypto legislation called the CLARITY Act has passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate. I don’t know much about either bill, but I do know that they don’t ban cryptocurrency entirely, and any bill that doesn’t do that is bad crypto legislation as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately for sound public policy, the crypto industry has thrown too much money at politicians in general, and Trump in particular.

So yeah, things are going just great.

Not everything is on fire, mind you. The situation in Los Angeles has fizzled out, with the Marines and about half of the federalized California National Guard having been withdrawn a couple of weeks back. And the Iran-Israel conflict seems to have completely subsided after Trump’s brief unilateral military action. Of course, there’s still Gaza. And Ukraine. And Trump advertising that he has just sent two nuclear submarines to “appropriate regions” near Russia.

The Epstein saga remains a major story, however. It was burning so hot several days ago that Speaker Johnson actually sent the House home for its summer break a day early, out of fear that in that remaining day there might be some uncomfortable votes relating to calls for further transparency on Epstein. Since then, Deputy Attorney General Blanche took the extraordinary step of personally interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell in prison for two days, after which she has been transferred to a minimum-security facility. Let’s pause to remember Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking. There’s speculation that Maxwell may ultimately receive a commutation or pardon in return for (potentially perjurious) testimony to Congress that exonerates Trump. In the meantime, there is reporting that the FBI spent vast amounts of time this spring going through the Epstein files and redacting any references to Trump.

And with Epstein simmering, Trump has sought to change the subject with a continuation of his grievances over 2016 and 2020, recently accusing President Obama of treason while DNI Gabbard alleged “a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an effort to undermine President Trump’s administration.” Substantiation of these accusations has not occurred in the 10 days since the words were uttered, nor have any charges been filed against anyone.

There was, however, just an announcement that former Special Counsel Smith would face an investigation for potential violations of the Hatch Act. Even if one were to find such violations, since the remedy is removal from government service and Smith is no longer a government employee, any such investigation would seem pointless. Seems like there’s a phrase for those types of investigations, it’s on the tip of my tongue… ah yes, “witch hunt!“.

Catching up on the week that was…

More disappointing news out of SCOTUS, as they ruled Monday in a shadow docket case called McMahon v. New York to overturn a temporary injunction that had prevented Education Secretary McMahon from terminating half of the Department of Education’s workforce, as (quoting McMahon) “the first step towards a total shutdown” of the Department. As with other cases, litigation about the legality of the actions will continue, but in the meantime structural damage to the functioning of the federal government will be done. This time Sotomayor drew the assignment of writing the dissent, on behalf of all three liberals. Much of the commentary around the decision pointed out the incongruity between the Court’s handling of this case versus its handling in Biden v. Nebraska of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program, thus strengthening the case many on the left are making that SCOTUS is acting in a partisan rather than principled manner.

And disappointing news out of the Senate, in two different ways this week.

First, the Judiciary Committee has advanced the nomination of Emil Bove to the 3rd Circuit, notwithstanding that he may be uniquely unqualified to serve on the federal bench (and many believe Trump intends to nominate him to SCOTUS when a vacancy arrives). As Ben Wittes recently put it: “Bove’s fundamental problem as a nominee is that there is simply no reason to believe him ethically or morally capable of fulfilling the judicial oath Trump has nominated him to take. His career, particularly the past six months of it, have been marked by an unmistakable trail of allegations—many of them not meaningfully in contest—of conduct simply unacceptable in a federal judge.” The full Senate is expected to vote on his nomination next week; I still have hope, but I really had hoped he wouldn’t make it out of Judiciary.

Next, the Senate voted 51-48 to approve a slightly modified version of the $9 billion rescissions package that, among other things, kills federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The earlier procedural vote, on whether to proceed to debate, actually required Vance as tiebreaker, with opposition from Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell. However once debate was underway, Senator Smith (D-MN) had to be hospitalized overnight, depriving the Democrats of a no vote; and in the end McConnell switched sides for the final vote. Today the House passed the revised version (which restored $400 million in funding for international AIDS relief), 216-213. With this precedent having been set, it will be interesting to see what further rescission packages the administration puts forward for the House’s consideration.

Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS currently attempting to merge with a company called Skydance, had earlier this month agreed to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for $16 million. The lawsuit, which relates to an interview with Vice President Harris that “60 Minutes” had aired during the 2024 campaign, was widely viewed as being completely without merit. However, Paramount needs FCC approval to complete the merger with Skydance… On Monday CBS late night host Stephen Colbert, a Trump critic, returned from a two-week vacation and referred to the $16 million settlement as a “big fat bribe”. On Thursday, CBS announced that it would cancel Colbert’s show, The Late Show, in May after 11+ years with Colbert as host following David Letterman’s 22-year run. While CBS asserts this was strictly a financial decision, there is widespread suspicion that the cancellation of the show may have political motivations.

But the huge political story of the week involves disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein, who died by hanging in 2019 while in federal custody for sex trafficking charges.

It is hard to know quite where to begin here in explaining this story… Epstein had a long list of very powerful friends, including both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who may (or may not) have engaged in sexual activity with underage women that Epstein allegedly trafficked. (I say ‘allegedly’ since Epstein died before trial but, after his death, Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of related charges and is serving a 20-year federal sentence.) As such there is widespread interest in the question of what incriminating material Epstein may have retained and that may be in the possession of federal investigators, and who that material incriminates. In particular, many of the MAGA persuasion believe that these “Epstein files” would incriminate whole swaths of the “deep state”, and that the Biden administration was keeping these files secret to protect Democratic interests. Given this, a major priority for many MAGA figures–including the men who are now the top 2 officials in the FBI, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino–was getting the Trump administration to provide full transparency about the Epstein investigation, including whether his death in custody was really a suicide.

That objective overlooks an inconvenient truth, namely that in the 1990s and 2000s Epstein and Trump were reportedly very close friends. As such, it seems far more likely that full transparency into the Epstein files would incriminate Trump himself than it would reveal, as MAGAites appear to expect, a vast sex trafficking conspiracy among leading Democrats. In light of this, over the past few months the administration has been slow-walking its commitment to transparency around the Epstein files. Then, almost a week ago, DOJ and the FBI released an unsigned two-page memo that basically said there’s nothing to see here, claiming that there actually is no “incriminating ‘client list'” (despite Attorney General Bondi’s earlier contention that said list was on her desk awaiting her review) and re-affirming that Epstein’s death was by his own hand.

This has not gone over well among Trump’s base. Trump keeps trying to move past the issue, claiming recently that these Epstein files are yet another “Democratic hoax” and arguing that Republicans who are fixated on this issue are “stupid”. Sensing weakness, Democrats are now jumping on the bandwagon of supporting full transparency for the Epstein files, and there may well be enough Republicans joining them to eventually force the administration into releasing more than they want to release.

And then yesterday the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell, reporting that for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 Trump had penned a very curious letter as part of a tribute to Epstein, including a signed doodle of a naked woman and ending with the wish that “every day be another wonderful secret.” Today Trump has sued the WSJ and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for defamation, seeking billions of dollars in damages. Of course, let us remember that truth is considered a complete defense to accusations of defamation.